this and that from the pen and keyboard of mcgarvey ice

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Category Archives: Colossians

Just added to the Spoken Word page are one presentation and three handouts from yesterday’s workshop.

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I spent a few in the reading room after the workshop. I will post sometime this week another installment in the Dorris Research Unanswered Question series.

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If you have not already heard about it, check out this article at DisciplesWorld concerning our week at DCHS (hence my absence from the blogosphere). The article pretty well covers the bases. Needless to say we have a mess on our hands, but a local company is taking care of it in good order. I suspect by sometime this week we should be back at a good level of functionality. My office on the other hand…it may take a couple weeks to get all the stacks of paper back in proper disarray. Thankfully only a few rather unimportant working files got damp and nothing truly important was damaged at all.

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I’m teaching Philippians and Colossians again this quarter at church. The intro to Col has been up at the Spoken Word page for a few weeks. I will add the presentation on Phil next week.

I have uploaded to the Spoken Word page notes for two classes I did at church to introduce Colossians. The class is an adult Sunday school class composed of professionals in the fields of business, education, health care, technology and the sciences. I’d guess the average age to be mid to late 40’s, and most all have kids in middle school or high school (some in college and some in elem. school). I have, after prayer and annoucements, about 40 minutes…so as you will see…I had to move quickly to cover what’s in the file.

I presuppose the folks in class are intelligent, inquisitive, eager students. I presuppose they are eager to hear a word from God, not just sit through another Sunday School “lesson” manufactured by Mac Ice. I presuppose they are willing to ground their understanding of Colossians first of all in the meaning intended by its author to its original recipients. I assume they want and need to hear the theological message of the letter. I also assume they are willing to move from exegesis to spiritual formation and service. I assume that exegesis ought to result in spiritual transformation and that good teaching attends to the head, the heart, and the hands. You will only see some of that move in these introductory notes, but it will factor into the discussion of the text. These assumptions undergird my teaching, and I addressed them as we proceeded through the beginning of the first session. I had not thought in such explicit terms (as in talking about it in front of a class) about my teaching, so the exercise was very helpful to me as I sat down to process and articulate some things about my teaching ministry. I think it is only fair for me to do this since we are new at church and this is my first extended teaching stint. We’ll see if they ask me to teach again after this series concludes in April. 🙂